Tom -- I hear where you're coming from, but one of the big unwritten commandments of working on a political campaign is "Don't become the story". The more the press spends its time reporting on John Edwards' bloggers rather than Edwards himself, the more than campaign is forced off-message and forced into defensive rather that offensive mode.
In short, Edwards needs to get past this as quickly as possible. Getting the liberal blogosphere to go to the barricades for Melissa and Amanda is probably not the best way to achieve that.
I agree that it would be ideal if this didn't last more than a single news cycle. I don't think capitulation will accomplish that. Conversely, I don't think making the story about Donohue will extend it. What I'm talking about here is not 'going to the barricades' so much as simply pointing out that a) this is a joke, and b) the real story is the attempts by Donohue and his vicious, ugly kind to work the refs.
Tom, you rock!
Salon's reporting that he fired them. Coward.
Thanks, Kathy! And I'm a little dubious about the Salon story...I haven't seen that anywhere else, and the Edwards campaign isn't confirming it.
Kathy - It's still unconfirmed as of right now. The article stated that the Edwards camp is due to say something on the issue later. Over at Shakes, we're still in limbo as to what's going on.
Fiat Lux, a couple more things have occurred to me.
One is that this is an insider baseball story at a time when relatively few people are paying any attention to the 2008 campaign. We're not yet into primary season, when it can be fatal to lose control of the message for even a day or two. I'm inclined to think keeping Amanda and Melissa will pay off with the netroots without the general public much noticing; conversely, shitcanning them would damage the Edwards campaign with a good segment of their potential base, without gaining anything from it. But that's just a top-of-the-head assessment.
The other thing is that there is literally nothing any Democrat can do that will keep him or her from being labeled a left-wing extremist, and nothing he or she can do will keep the Washington press corps from passing on those accusations (no matter how far-fetched or unfounded). That's the reality we live in. Based on that understanding, I argue that any capitulation to right-wing attacks is a) damaging to everyone on our side, and b) 100% guaranteed not to work.
I rescind the "coward" label, and I sincerely hope I won't have to re-award it. Edwards should hang tough here. If he doesn't now, he can look forward to being trampled in the future.
Edwards is not obliged to say anything. Most of all, he should fire no-one.
I don't think he's obliged to say anything. I think he'd be smart to counterattack. But yeah, he should definitely not fire anybody over this idiocy.
I'm hoping the Edwards campaign is smart enough to play this as Tom recommends, and will hit back hard today. Hopefully they're just pausing dramatically here to ratchet up the suspense. The bigots have actually given Edwards a powerful gift. Who that matters, who that might ever have supported an Edwards candidacy, could possibly be alienated by a display of opposition to -- make that defiance of -- the likes of Malkin and Donohue? Take the gift and make the statement.
Who that matters, who that might ever have supported an Edwards candidacy, could possibly be alienated by a display of opposition to -- make that defiance of -- the likes of Malkin and Donohue? Take the gift and make the statement.
I think this is an excellent point. If there's advantage to be gained from demonizing wingnuts (and I think there is), Donohue (anti-Semitic homobigot) and Malkin (revisionist defender of internment) are perfect targets.
This non-story story is actually an opportunity to inoculate Edwards against the inevitable swiftboating. He should make it a story so that the public associates "falsely accused" with him. Then the next story will get less traction, and the credibility of the wingnuts, which by rights should already be zero, will drop even among the cynical, lowest common denominator, bought and paid for TV news executives.
I think you have a point...unfortunately, or fortunately, it seems to be over for now. But I do think we need to make a concerted effort to discredit and ostracize people like Donohue.
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